Boston Marathon Explosion Traffic Downs Boston Globe Website

The two bomb blasts that has so-far killed two and injured at least 28 at the finish line of the Boston Marathon Monday afternoon caused a traffic explosion that downed the Boston Globe‘s paywalled site.

“We understand this is not the usual practice,” Ron Agrella, the editor of Boston.com, wrote in a memo obtained by FishbowlNY, “but we have more than 85,000 concurrent readers tuned into our our live blog now and seconds count.”

The New York Times Company-owned paper revamped its internal system more than a year ago when it introduced the Italian CMS, Méthode, allowing editors to cross post reports on blogs on the Boston.com and to the subscription-based BostonGlobe.com.

But as the details slowly emerge from scene and cable broadcasters fill the air with speculation and commentary (Fox News featured Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, really), Twitter has become the wellspring for news updates.

The Globe leaned hard on its @BostonGlobe account, retweeting reporters and citizens on the ground. The Boston Herald, the metro tabloid with a far less Twitter-savvy presence, retweeted live updates from its reporters on the scene. Adam Gaffin, the blogger behind UniversalHub, kept an Andy Carvin-esque feed going of updates from those around Boston.

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